Environment & Sustainability

These days the world is looking at Copenhagen Summit, its agenda and how much carbon footprint it is generating. At the same time the most climate-friendly childcare center in Denmark is being established in Hørsholm. Hørsholm is situated in the north of Copenhagen. This childcare center will be opened in November 2010. The nursery, has been commissioned by Hørsholm Council in cooperation with VKR Holding. This childcare center is designed by Christensen & Co. Architects. This center will boast of state-of-the-art facilities and will generate more energy than it consumes. No Comments

Stephens-Romero is a UC Irvine doctoral candidate in the Advanced Power & Energy Program. His 2060 analysis was published online recently in Environmental Science & Technology. Stephens-Romero is painting the picture of future for our benefit, "For the first time, we can look at these future fuel scenarios and say how they're going to impact things like ozone and particulate matter, which have severe effects on people's lungs and quality of life." 21 Comments

Carbon is a substance environmentalists love to hate. It is the major ingredient of environmental damage. Scientists and environmentalists are working hard to decrease the amount of carbon emission in the environment. But researchers at the University of Warwick have invented a complete different use of carbon. They are using carbon for cooling and heating our cars and homes. If one follows their way, carbon can be utilized in a clean and green way. We know that heating and cooling gadgets make our life comfortable but they are not easy on our pockets. They need lots of power to run and ultimately get transformed into huge amount of bills to pay. If we look at the stats we will find that domestic space heating and hot water devour 25% of energy in the UK. Automobile air conditioning uses about 5% of the vehicle fuel consumed annually all over the EU. Inside the UK, it is responsible for over 2 million tonnes of CO2 emissions. 1 Comment

There is an obvious push on not only using less energy, but in finding other forms of energy that will allow the world to recover from the years of literally pillaging its natural resources. Germany has been using some pretty innovative techniques to lead the way and their designers are coming up with more energy efficient homes all the time. However, with the promotion of using a smart grid Germany hopes to make people even more aware of the energy that they are using and more importantly, wasting. 7 Comments

We all know that energy can neither be created nor be destroyed but can only be transformed into one form to another. Duke University engineers are trying to utilize this simple formula. They are working on harvesting energy from the motions of everyday life. Normally our everyday motions get wasted and remain unused and dissipate in the form of heat without our realization. Energy harvesting strategies cover the installation of colossal wind farms to manufacture large amounts of electricity to using the vibrations of walking to power small electronic devices. 1 Comment

It seems the canvass of clean and green energy is getting bigger with each passing day. More and more products, vehicles, gadgets, homes and cities are being added to this ever expanding canvass. Germany’s Hamburg Harbor has announced the development of a world class Eco City. This eco city will be designed by Tec Architecture and the global engineering group ARUP. This city will encompass many industries and entrainment facilities. No Comments

Off shore wind is steady and blows harder. If a country is densely populated it is hard to find open space to install wind farms. That is why there are more and more offshore wind farms in densely populated Europe where there is limited space on land and relatively large offshore areas with shallow water. Scientists of the Geesthacht GKSS Research Centre are interested in offshore winds and mechanics of sea waves. They are working on a radar system to study the behavior of the sea waves. This technology will be available for utilization on the North Sea on the FINO3 research platform. This technology will help in finding out the details of the interactions between offshore wind power machines and swells. 1 Comment

In most part of the world safe and clean drinking water is unavailable for daily consumption and industrial use. Currently to desalinate water two kinds of technologies are being used. First is known as reverse osmosis and the second is electro-dialysis. Both of these processes need huge amount of energy. A team of scientists from China and U.S.A are working to eliminate ninety percent of the salts from seawater or brackish water. They are also trying to generate electricity from wastewater. "Water desalination can be accomplished without electrical energy input or high water pressure by using a source of organic matter as the fuel to desalinate water," reported in a recent online issue of Environmental Science and Technology. 3 Comments

Your barn has always been a good source of energy. Up till now it has been due to the fact that you store all your wood in the barn. But now you can have a barn that not only preserves your wood for winter it also produces solar energy -- enough to meet the energy requirements of the barn and in some cases the access energy can also be sold. Barns are normally constructed at places that have no electricity supply but have a great need for power, for many barns have wood-processing machines and even small offices, and running them off generators can be pretty expensive and polluting. 2 Comments

If we try to get rid of plastics altogether from our lives, we know that it is quite impractical. So what is the next best thing? We can recycle plastic in such a manner that it is economical and produces clean and green energy for our utilization. Industrial designer Chris Allen has come up with an imaginative answer to the problem of plastic litter. He named his project as 'The Plastic Plan.' This project needs millions of plastic bottles along with their caps. We can procure these plastic bottles from landfills and carbon-intensive recycling plants. The next step is to convert these plastic bottles into thousands of cubes that can float on the ocean surface. Now after having thousands of similar these cubes can be joined together to form an offshore structure. This structure’s size is akin to three football fields. These structures are stacked one on top of the other. 30 Comments

An environmentally friendly washing machine has been developed by the University of Leeds, Britain. The technology has been developed by Professor Stephen Burkinshaw of the University of Leeds. He has been working on this project for the past thirty years. This project had been funded by IP Group, an intellectual property commercialization group. The project team claims that this clean and green machine will just need a cup of water to wash clothes. It would be available in the market next year. But currently the washing machine will be available in hotels and dry cleaning outlets only. 9 Comments

We have seen many Olympic Games but didn’t bother to check about the green quotient of the games, till now. What is most talked about is always the performance of the athletes. But slowly the scenario is changing. People are becoming aware of the green factor of the games and United Nations is taking active interest in making the games clean and green. United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Russian Olympic organizers. According to this MOU, UNEP will help and advise them on making the Sochi Olympic Games environmentally friendly. Sochi Olympics will be held in 2014. There is more need to pay attention to Sochi and its flora, fauna and environment because Sochi is situated between the gentle shores of the Black Sea and the snow-capped Caucasus Mountains in Russia's Krasnodar Region and is renowned for its pristine setting. 1 Comment

Most of the time we ignore simple solutions dismissing them as too simplistic. But often we can achieve immeasurable amount of success with simple and practical solutions. We might think about the shape of wings and speed of airplanes but we don’t give much thought to an airplane’s wings in terms of reducing fuel and carbon emissions by making changes to those wings. But someone was looking at airplane’s wings and thinking of clean and green energy. If we make tiny holes in plane's wing they can reduce airline fuel intake by up to 40 per cent. A team of British scientists are relying upon the same principle that applies when you blow across the top of a bottle to make a sound. 7 Comments

When we think about sources of alternative energy, we often feel a rush of positive thoughts engulfing us. We often think that while developing alternative sources of energy we are doing nothing wrong. But building up new sources of alternative energy is a double edged weapon. If we don’t tread cautiously we might hurt ourselves in the process. Caution should be exercised if we are going for biofuels as alternative source of energy. USA can boast of beautiful flora and fauna. We have the wild lands of the Cumberland Plateau in the southeast and formidable Rocky Mountains and Alaska's Tongass National Forest. Wildlife and natural forests of these places are rich and varied. But big businesses are trying to inflict irreversible damage to these pristine places in the guile of electricity and biofuels. We know that once destroyed we will never be able to restore the flora and fauna of these places to its former glory. So we have to be aware of those alternative energy resources that do more harm than good. 7 Comments

Scientists are continuously working on to find an alternative to fossil fuels. We are familiar with the side effects of fossil fuels and its impact on environment. Right now the fossil fuels seem to be necessary evil we can’t do without. Scientists want alternative fuels that have none of the ill effects of traditional fuels. 18 Comments

We come across scores of people unmindful of giving back to nature what they are taking and consuming the resources of nature, haphazardly. But we also come across a privileged few who care about environment and their surroundings and they believe in consuming less and utilizing the resources of nature intelligently. Veljko Milkovic belongs to that rare category of people who believe in and practice clean and green living. He has also written a book known as "Ecological Houses" discussing the details of self-heating sod houses. 6 Comments

Geothermal energy falls under the category of renewable energy source because the water is replenished by rainfall and the heat is continuously produced inside the earth. Geothermal energy is derived from heat within the earth. People can use the steam and hot water created inside the earth to heat buildings or produce electricity. Wondering what makes the water so hot? Geothermal energy is produced in the earth's core. 2 Comments

With its windy coasts, untapped rivers and huge tidal and wave resources, Alaska can quickly become a national leader in producing alternative energy. Although Alaska is the second-largest oil producing state in the country, the citizens have had to pay very high electricity bills recently; oil is no longer easily available for producing and generating power. 3 Comments

We are experiencing the effects of economic recession remotely or directly. Our political leaders are trying to assuage the situation on several levels. United States House and Senate members reached an agreement last week on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. President Obama is about to sign economic stimulus package. President Obama has already anticipated the future of solar energy and other renewable energy sources. He has clearly emphasized this by stating, "the country that figures out how to make cheaper energy that's also clean, is going to win the economic competition of the future." 4 Comments

Currently a team of MIT researchers are using platinum electrodes and ficus plants to discover the truth of feeble electric currents from trees. They have come up with an answer. They state that the pH difference between the soil and the living tree is the cause of creating electric currents. Now scientists are debating over how to use this power source for human benefits. 7 Comments